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Dear Bonsall Community,
In several of my earlier letters I mentioned the rough times ahead as California’s budget problems become even more serious for schools. For Bonsall schools to minimize the damage to our vision/mission of “Academic excellence and support for all students”, the following points must be understood by everyone:
Considering the depth of this recession and that the economic forecasts say education’s funding recovery isn’t expected until 2015, we don’t see increased revenues on the horizon. Therefore, all of our budget decisions are being made with a perspective of a minimum of three years ahead. Currently, with the Federal stimulus money, the recent cuts in staff, and increased class sizes, we should be able to get through this year without any major problems as long as the Governor doesn’t call for more mid-year budget cuts or further defer the State’s payments to our district. In fact, because of the Federal stimulus money, we should have budget carryover in the 2009-10 school year. We need to avoid a false sense of solvency however, because the Federal stimulus money is one time funding. Currently we are using these funds to keep our teachers and implement technology that helps to reduce the impact of increased class sizes, and improves our instructional program.
When the Federal stimulus money is gone after next year there will be a dramatic drop in our budget that will call for more teacher layoffs and even greater class size increases. The “cliff year” as many are calling it, will bring serious cuts to services throughout the District. In the graph below we see that, due to this loss in funding and increased costs, we will have over a million dollars deficit by the 2011-12 school year.
To reduce this radical change in funding, and to minimize class size increases coming from further cuts in teaching staff, we are proposing several historic solutions until an economic recovery causes our revenues to increase.
The first solution is to reduce our costs by eliminating the automatic annual increase in pay (often referred to as “step”) that teachers receive. This would save approximately $177,00 each year. Another cost saving solution the District is proposing is to take five days off the school calendar toward the end of the year. This cut will result in a savings of $233,000 each year. Personnel costs are 83% of our budget. We know that great teaching deserves great pay. We also know it is important that we don’t have to lay off teachers and increase class size to levels that make it difficult for students to learn. The step pay increases salary costs by 2.5% per year while revenues have fallen by18%. When revenues from the State stop falling (we have dropped $1,120 per pupil in the past year) and increase enough to provide pay increases, the District intends to pay more to our staff.
Some people have suggested that we spend down the 5% reserve instead. The reason that is not an option is because it isn’t even enough to pay one month’s salary to our staff. Should the State further defer payments to us, something they regularly do to solve their budget problem, we need the cash to be available for payroll.
The District’s Guiding Principles for policy and decisions throughout these tough times will be:
To summarize, the Bonsall Union School District is proposing the above cuts in spending to maintain current staffing levels and class sizes; we want the Bonsall family to stay intact and maintain our continuous improvement in student achievement. The proposal to our teachers’ union for these spending cuts was shared with the public at our recent October 15, 2009 Board of Trustees Meeting. Metaphorically speaking we are trying to maintain a glide path for a safe landing for our school community while our fuel supply is reduced.
We must act now. The above information is based on the State’s current approved budget. Recent statewide revenue projections are indicating and additional $15 billion dollar shortfall in 2010-11; we could be running out of fuel faster than we anticipated. It is critical that we realize that if we pull together we can get through these tough times and thrive rather than just survive.